BBC
Nujuum Hashi, who has overcome traditional prejudice to become a respected artist in Somalia, decided on her career as she drew pictures in the sand as a seven year old in the capital, Mogadishu.
Her family had no fixed abode as this was the height of the civil war of the 1990s and early 2000s. They fled from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but Hashi always found sand to draw in.
“Art has always been a form of relief for me,” says Hashi. “During periods of intense fighting, drawing pictures of normal, peaceful life calmed my nerves.”
Art also helped her after the war quietened down. “My quranic teacher was super aggressive. He used to beat us. I was terrified of him. I drew pictures in the sand on my way home as a form of stress relief.
“I used my school pencils to draw a whole city on my bedroom wall, building it up image by image over time.”
Hashi never went to art school. “My father was my teacher. He wasn’t an artist but he used to doodle in his spare time. I asked him to show me how to draw. But he died when I was young.”
Her mother did not support her dreams of becoming an artist. Neither did her neighbours, who accused her of being un-Islamic. Most Muslims believe that art depicting humans and animals is forbidden.
“They forced me to stop painting. I abandoned art completely and studied nursing. But I found it boring. One day I decided art would never leave me and I would never leave my art, no matter what people thought of me.”
Now Hashi makes a decent living from her art and is able to support her extended family.
The 26 year old lives in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, and receives commissions from government departments, international organisations and individuals. Somaliland’s education ministry asked her to provide images for its campaign to get more girls into school.
“This girl is doing her homework while she tends the family’s goats after her long walk home from school. I wanted to show that girls can study alongside their household duties.”
A recent commission was a mural for a women-only media house, Bilan, recently established in Mogadishu. It shows a journalist filming women as they go about their daily lives. If you look carefully under the tree, you can see Hashi painting a picture.
It is not easy to find artists’ materials in Somalia and Somaliland so she has to ask friends to send her paint, brushes and canvases from Kenya, Djibouti and beyond…
